Damn good day. The latest report from CalFire shows no increase in burned area during the day, and a four percent increase in containment. Your crossed fingers must have helped, Richard, along with NoCo's wet thoughts (still creepy). Just keep them crossed for a few more day, if you don't mind.

It's supposed to heat up again in a couple of days. I hope they continue to make progress before then.

The fire burned an area about seventeen miles in length. When it started, it was burning directly toward us, but after a couple of days they contained the southern edge of the fire and the winds changed so that it grew directly away from us. As we are only about fourteen miles from the southern end of the burn zone, had the fire not changed course, it could have gotten ugly here.Whew!

Here's a picture of a sign of appreciation from the 1985 fire. And the sentiment is correct: we came extremely close to losing the entire city. Coverage of the fire was on the front page of The New York Times and was the lead story on CNN (the only cable news at the time).

Here's just a portion of the more than 130-square-mile fire they saved us from. I don't know about you, but to me this is a damned scary picture. The flames were thirty feet high a half block from our house.

Down the street recently (this summer) the city installed (using I suppose federal money), dipshit designed huge catch basins for runoff water. They're twenty feet in diameter and six feet deep and filled with water-loving plants.

I've seen catch basins like this in California and Indiana where you get gully-washers, which will cause flooding if not controlled.

We don't get gully washers where I live. The average rainfall is 12-14 inches per year; can't even wash a medium sized gully with that. Last year, we got 15 inches - an actual normal year! Of course, it took the largest El Nino ever recorded to give us that.

It will be autumn in a few days. I guess summer wants to go out with a bang: it is now 111.2 degrees here.

Walked outside a few minutes ago and it is smoky as hell. Had been clear all morning.Where I live, there is only one narrow, twisty road out, so the sudden appearance of heavy smoke is very disconcerting.

Turns out there is a 4,500-acre fire near Vandenberg Air Force Base. The smoke from that is reaching us, as well as smoke from the 113,000-acre fire to the north. Getting really, really tired of this.

The weather has turned to what appears to be normal. We have had 3.27" of rain so far this year. Average for this point in the year is 1.94". Maybe we'll have a normal rainfall this year. Damn, that would be two years in a row.